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ECHOES 

by 

Donald Robertson 







lUustrated by 

by 

Gordon Ertz 





m 23 1921 
g)CI.A614236 



To 
E. R. McG. 



^ Though no grace may belong 

^ To this drift-weed of song 

From the gulf stream of Youth, 
Save a savor of Truth, 
Yet I know, that alone may beguile 
For a moment or two, 
Recognition from you. 
And, superlative prize, 
From your searehing kind eyes 
Be awarded the joy of your smile. 

D. R. 




Copyrighted 1921 by 
Donald Robertson, Chicago. 



ECHOES 



CONTENTS 



Quatrain I 12, 

Beloved 13 

Quatrain II 16 

She 17 

Quatrain III 20 

Compensation 21 

Quatrain IV 24 

Completion 25 

Quatrain V 28 

A Petition 29 

Quatrain VI 32 

Questions 33 

Quatrain VII 36 

When Sappho Smiled 37 

Quatrain VIII (double) 40 

I Have a Friend 41 

Quatrain IX (double) 44 

Perceptions 45 

Triolet 48 

Echoes 49 

A Toast 52 



QUATRAIN I 



If Fate my fondest wish would smile upon, 
This I affirm would give me most delight 

To be a word of Hope to you at Dawn, 
To be a word of Love to you at Night. 




12 



j 



BELOYED 



13 



BELOYED 



WASHED in the clean light of the stars I send 
My soul to gazę in rapture on your face. 
And be absorbed in one supremę embrace, 
Believing, without words, you comprehend, 
Believing all my love and longings blend 

Within your eyes to light, that can replace. 
By some miraculous, mysterious grace, 
The ghostly darkness by the Dawn's dear Friend; 
By You, Beloved! with the peaceful Soul 
Whom God hath given me to be my own. 
My noonday Joy, my gentle zephyr blown 
Across the purple mountain of my dreams, 
You, whom the twin Eternities extol 
In star-songs to the woods and winds and 
streams. 



15 



QUATRAIN II 



Fearlessly follow your Dream, 
Dare and the world must believe, 

Live in the fullness of Now, 

Give and your heart shall receive. 




16 



SHE 



a^ 



5ring 



V 



17 



SHE 



SHE, whom the High Gods have dowered 
With Beauty and Freedom and Passion, 
Is one with the wind and the stars 
And the ąuickening moments of Time. 
Men with the dream-haunted hearts 
Forever are striving to fashion 
For her their despair and desires 
Into fragrant delirious rhyme. 

She, whom the High Gods have dowered 
With Sympathy, Patience and Candor, 
Is one with the dew and the dawn 
And the shadows of great lonely rocks. 
Dreamers, whose dreams must come true, 
With listening souls understand her, 
And pray that her winnowing eyes 
May shepherd their wandering flocks. 

She, whom the High Gods have dowered 

With Valor and Yirtue and Vision, 

Is one with the urge in all Life 

That aches to attain and arise; 

Fervently now at her feet 

I beg for the holy permission 

To gather her heart to my heart, 

And be cleansed in the light of her eyes. 



19 



QUATRAIN III 



As lonely as the moment is between the Dark 

and Dawn, 
A little Di*eam goes fluttering f orever on and on, 
From Eden, past it came and seeks that Par- 

adise to be 
On earth, when men shall nobly strive in Love 

and Liberty. 




20 



COMPENSATION 



ex\ 



21 



COMPENSATION 



nn HE Dream in my heart caught the Song on 
-^ your lips, 

And a rapturous moment was born, 
Creation was thrilled to its star finger-tips 
When the Dream in my heart caught the Song 
on your lips. 

And I yisioned Eternity's morn. 
The meaning of yesteryear's longing and ache 

Was focused on Infinite space. 
And Beauty held up her sweet mouth and said, 

Take, 
To answer my yesteryear's longing and ache, 
As I gazed on your exquisite face. 



23 



gUATRAIN IV 



A thought blossoms like a white flower 
In the cleft of a broken heart, 

The Maker of Dreams in his hour 
Will distil into fragrant Art. 




24 



COMPLETION 



25 



COMPLETION 



AN odour of Dreams-in-the-bud was blown 
To my heart in the cave of night, 
A whisper of rapture till then unknown, 
A firefly of Dusk on dim wings had flown 
From an Eden of sheer delight. 

I gazed in your eyes and my spirit knew 

The embrace of untarnished bliss, 
And YouŁh's aspirations at last came true, 
For Love, with its lips wet with morning dew, 
Was married to Life by your kiss. 



27 



QUATRAIN V 



I look up at the vast reposeful sky 

Where star on steadfast star is multiplied. 

And ask, but get no answer to my ery, 
Why must the Best be always crucified? 




28 



A PETITION 



29 



A PETITION 



YOUR eyes have within them the Joy of the 
nest, 
The Sweep of the scythe and the Beat of the 
wing, 
They can matę every mood of amhition or rest 
And carelessly encompass everything. 

Your breast is a beacon of rapturous fire, 

Your voice has the lure and the lilt of the 
Spring, 

Your mouth, the twin lips of Delight and Desire, 
And You! you are Ecstacy's love-offering. 

My words have the flight of a spark, and no 
morę, 

The throb of a longing is all of their art, 
But still sińce they mean, I adore you, adore, 

I pray they may lie in the lap of your heart. 



31 



QUATRAIN VI 



In the white Silences between these lines, 

The ghost of one pure golden summer stands, 

Pathetically patient it repines 

Not, but it stretches f orth two pleading bands. 




32 



QUESTIONS 



33 



OUESTIONS 



QUESTIONS with pale and patient human 
faces. 
One after one come silently today, 
Gliding from far off long-forgotten places, 
Where, as a child with Dreams I used to play. 

i 

Questions with peering eyes are ąuietly asking, 

Why this I did? Why that was left undone? 

Meagre excuses, long sińce madę, unmasking. 

But from my soul for answer hearing nonę. 

Gazing intently till my brain grows dizzy. 

Out of the dark my quivering conscience 
hears, 
''As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he, 

What of this harvest from the vanished 
years?'' 

Chastened, I turned away from my old sorrows, 
With this resolve, the golden glow whereof 

Lights up the path o'er my remaining morrows, 
Humbly to walk with Wisdom which is Love. 



35 



QUATRAIN VII 



Immovable, immaculate, inviolate it stands, 
Eternal — yet f orever with the searching eyes 
of Youth, 
It beautifies what was, or is, or will be with its 
hands. 
And smiles upon its worshipers; its name, my 
friend, is Truth. 




36 



WHEN SAPPHO SMILED 



37 



WHEN SAPPHO SMIŁED 



W 



HEN Sappho smiled," Alcaeus said, 
"^"^In shame he bent Łis laureled head," 
And mutely worshiped from afar, 
In song's blue heaven the brightest star, 
When Sappho smiled. 

In Mytilene, words were wed 
To ecstacy, and trumpeted 
To where Time's utmost children are, 
When Sappho smiled. 

The Pierian roses, red, 
A flaming incense madly shed. 
To cleave, like some keen scimitar, 
The opal doors of Life ajar 
And show Creation's nuptial bed, 
When Sappho smiled. 



39 



DOUBLE QUATRAIN VIII 



Madonna with the wistful eyes, 

Wherein the East and West are met, 

A Memory within them lies 
That has f orgotten to f orget. 

A Memory of Dreams and Days 
And Nights that knew of no regret, 

Nested in Silence there it stays 
Till Death remembers to forget. 




40 



I HAVE A FRIEND 



41 



I HAVE A FRIEND 



IHAVE a Friend who gives to me 
Brave cheer and constant sympathy. 
And though long miles between us lie, 
It always seems that she is nigh — 
I have a Friend. 

Should I succeed her joy would be 
As great as minę, and truły she 
Would make me happier thereby — 
I have a Friend. 

She knows that I have ships at sea, 
And I believe as anxiously 
She watches with a sleepless eye 
Their coming into port as I — 
So that is why I shout with glee — 
I have a Friend. 



43 



DOUBLE QUATRAIN IX 



E'en with the care a lapidary lifts, 

Between his finger tips, a precious stone, 

Meant for the Queen of some enchanted land, 
Divinely fair upon a radiant throne. 

So would my lips most delicately breathe 
The fitting word for you, the sound whereof 

Should błazen f orth your worth to all the world, 
See in my heart I find it, Dearest! — Love. 




44 



PERCEPTIONS 



45 



PERCEPTIONS 



THERE'S a sense of Eternal Life comes up 
And embraces the heart of me, 
WŁen a breath of the Spring comes whispering 

Of the Beauty about to be, 
Then I drink in the air like winę and lift 

Up my eyes to the mountain heights, 
Forgetting at onee all my ancient doubts. 
And the heirlooms of weary nights. 

There's a sense of Eternal Love comes up 

And sufiFuses with Dawn my soul, 
When I think of your winsome graciousness 

And your lif e so completely whole, 
Then I stretch out my arms to all mankind 

Weil aware of our Brotherhood, 
And am one with the deathless Universe 

And its inner urge to the Good. 



47 



TRIOLET 



The grip of a hand and a smile, 

The sound of soft evening bells; 
IVe carried for many a mile 
The grip of a hand and a smile 
Secure in my memory while 

I plodded through dismal helis: 
The grip of a hand and a smile 

The sound of soft evening bells. 




48 



ECHOES 



49 



ECHOES 



DRENCHED in moonlight and romance 
Echoes through my Memory dance, 
Singing down its frescoed halls 
Melting lilts and madrigals. 

Echoes of the tunes Love set, 
With heart-beats for castanet, 
To the summer-scented Hours 
Swaying round her head like flowers. 

Round the one my heart most prized. 
For her kindness canonized, 
She the April-eyed; God sent 
To reveal what living meant. 

• 
Echoes from Joys consummate, 
Flute-notes from the lips of Fate, 
Echoes through my memory dance, 
They are Love's inheritance. 



51 



A TOAST 



Here's to the Love that lives 
In despite of the fears of Heli, 

Here's to the hand that gives 

And the heart that f orgives as well. 

Here's to the Joy you seem. 

To the Peace that I f ain could be, 

Here's to the smiling Dream 
That links us through eternity. 




52 




53 



Herę ends "Echoes," a book of poems written 
by Donald Robertson and illustrated by Gordon 
Ertz. This is one of two hundred and fifty cop- 
ies printed at Chicago, Illinois, U. S. A., March, 
nineteen hundred and twenty-one, being num- 
ber 



55 



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^*»*^ INDIANA 46962 



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